Friday, June 28, 2013

Fine Art Friday - Diego Velázquez - Las Meninas

Many of you have probably seen this fascinating painting before, but it doesn't get old to me. There is so much detail and so many things and people (fully eleven!) that are depicted here. Some of the Spanish royal court and family are depicted here with the main focus the Infanta Margaret Theresa--at the time the only surviving child of King Philip IV of Spain. Painted in 1656, this large (125.2 in × 108.7 in) painting includes a self-portrait of the artist, Diego Velázquez.

Las Meninas has long been recognized as one of the most important paintings in Western art history. The Baroque painter Luca Giordano said that it represents the "theology of painting" and in the 1827 president of the R.A. Sir Thomas Lawrence described the work in a letter to his successor David Wilkie as "the true philosophy of the art".[4] More recently, it has been described as "Velázquez's supreme achievement, a highly self-conscious, calculated demonstration of what painting could achieve, and perhaps the most searching comment ever made on the possibilities of the easel painting".

There is so much more to be discovered about this painting. You might just want to click that Wiki link above to read about it. Do you see all eleven people in the painting?

What do you think of this one? I think it is beautiful and odd and fascinating all beautifully crafted.